This week’s dream: camping by a volcano in Iceland

In Iceland, nothing “follows the rule book”, says Emma Thomson in The Sunday Telegraph. The weather is at best “fickle”, and the “vowel-tastic” language indecipherable. Descended directly from the Vikings, the Icelandic people have an aversion to being told what to do: they have a healthy (and growing) mistrust of their leaders, and they don’t even have a word for “please”. As for the landscape, it is famously wild and untamable. Indeed, it was the eruption of an Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, or Eyo, that brought international air travel to a standstill in 2010. Now, as part of a guided tour, visitors can “camp” in huts “in the shadow” of that very same volcano.

After a comfortable first night in a boutique b&b 60 miles east of Reykjavík, it’s time to hit the road in a “brute of a car” with wheels “as tall as my head”. It’s the kind of vehicle that rolls “easily over rocks and riverbeds”, and comes with a “marinegrade GPS” for when bad weather leaves you driving blind. The huts are located in Húsadalur Valley, in the south of Iceland. If they are a bit spartan, it’s not something you notice when you walk into the glowing warmth of their interior; later, lying in a bunk, listening to the “rain and wind clawing at the roof”, you’re just happy not to be under canvas.

In nearby Thórsmörk Nature Reserve, there are gorges “carpeted with spongy moss” and slick black rocks, where slender waterfalls are often “lit by rainbows”. Valahnúkur is a popular hiking trail. The ground is “bejewelled with frost” as the path winds up to a crest, where “a staggering panorama” unfolds. A circle of “snow-dusted calderas cut through by silvery skeins of rivers” glint in the sunlight. In the distance, a glacier creaks its way down a mountain. There’s no sign of humanity anywhere: here, it’s “just Mother Nature” and you. Discover the World (www.discover-the-world.co.uk) runs the 4-night Iceland Wilderness by Superjeep tour, from £1,981pp, including flights.